If you think a single leadership style suits all circumstances, you would be wrong. Moreover, adapting the wrong leadership style at the wrong time can seriously damage an organization’s culture, while getting it right drives empowerment and teamwork.
So say the co-hosts of the Behind the Curtain: Adventures in Continuous Improvement podcast. In this episode, Professor Mohamed Saleh and John Dyer discuss the need to adapt leadership styles to where an organization is in its journey to becoming a team-based culture.
Dyer outlines four leadership styles:
Style 1: Crisis style: This is the leader who steps up, makes tough decisions and takes responsibility for getting an organization out of a tough situation where “you’re fighting the clock.” An immediate sense of urgency exists.
“We tend to think of crisis leaders as dictators that are cold and heartless, and [who] do whatever it takes to get the job done. That's not what we're talking about here,” Dyer says. “We're talking about someone who understands the situation, knows they need to take on the responsibility and make the tough decisions, but do it in a way that starts to build trust and camaraderie with the employees.”
Style 2: Idea generation style: Style 2 shows progress toward collaboration, with leaders engaging with people and seeking out their improvement ideas.
Style 3: Team style: A Style 3 leader provides direction for teams. They are coaching, mentoring and providing the teams with tools to be successful. It’s a further step toward leading a team-based culture of continuous improvement. And then there is:
Style 4: Empowerment: While a Style 4 leader still provides oversight, the leader has largely transitioned into a full-time coach to support well-operating teams who are addressing the problems that happen closest to the process. Additionally, the continued maturity of the team-based culture provides the leader with time to look ahead: Where can we expand? How should we prepare for the next downturn so that layoffs are not part of the equation?
Most cultural transformations begin at Style 1 and progress, notes Saleh. Moreover, warns Dyer, don’t try to hurry the progression.
“Too often, organizations try to jump from [Style] one to four, and the organization's not ready for it yet. … then, when the teams start to fail, the people who are more comfortable with that Style 1 leadership, the crisis leader, will say, ‘See, told you so, I told you this wouldn't work,” Dyer says.
The podcast hosts also discuss the following:
- Leadership styles have a language, “and the language you use in the empowerment style is very different than the language you use when you're in the crisis style,” Saleh says.
- An organization cannot over-communicate why it may have to shift from a Style 4 leadership (or Style 2 or 3) to a Style 1. What is important, the hosts say, is to commit to exiting crisis mode as quickly as possible and resuming the journey toward Style 4.
"Your goal is if you pivot to any of the other styles, is to have a time frame of when you're going to go back to [Style] four. Because if you spend too much time in a certain style that's not [Style 4] it could actually come at a cost," Saleh says.
- It's important for organizations to understand what leadership style is needed in their organization "and hire the right person to fulfill that need."
